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Developing a production plan for fruit-based drinks presents unique challenges for a business unit manager. The input material for fruit-based drinks, for example, fruit, can be highly variable in available quantity, cost, and quality. For example, available quantity, cost, and quality of fruit can depend on hurricane activity or if an early freeze occurs. Thus, the supply of available fruit for drinks can be highly variable across multiple dimensions.
Consumer demand for fruit-based drinks can depend on quality and cost. For example, consumers might buy more of a fruit-based drink when the drink composition is sweeter. However, the available quantity of sweet fruit may be limited. Thus, the business unit manager, faced with a limited quantity of sweet fruit, must develop a production plan that balances the available fruit with the perceived consumer demand.
The business unit manager has limited information and must rely primarily on intuition to develop a production plan. An intuitive approach can result in inconsistent results over time as well as across regions. Further, when a business unit manager leaves or moves to a different position, the institutional knowledge and experience of that person is lost. Therefore, improved systems and methods for developing and implementing production plans for fruit-based drinks are needed.